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I've never understood this.
Terminator armor is made to withstand being in rooms where open fusion is occurring. It's a bit over 1000 pounds in weight so you're literally wearing a car. It has a very strong power field that is augmented to even greater heights by Rosarius or Iron Halos or both.
Genestealers are bigger than any normal man should be, and about twice as dense. I could understand their claws tearing through steel with relative ease, but terminator armor, powerfield and all in a single swing? That's pushing it so far that it falls off the edge of the earth.

 ThePrimordial wrote:
It's a bit over 1000 pounds in weight so you're literally wearing a car.

I'm going to go ahead and say that most cars weigh more than that...

But Stealers are far larger and stronger than a mortal man. They are commonly described as stronger than a marine in power armor, and their claws are described as diamond hard. I think that its reasonable that they can penetrate Terminator armor, but its never a simple matter of just punching through it first time. Its usually a Stealer ambushing a Termi from behind and punching a claw through a joint.

Terminator armor doesn't have a power field. Its invulnerable save was an extension of the fact that they used to role their save on 2D6 and a 2+ on a D6 just wasn't as tough as the armor actually is supposed to be.

I'm going to go ahead and say that most cars weigh more than that...

You got a lot of cars that weigh that much. Most big trucks only weigh 1750 pounds.

But Stealers are far larger and stronger than a mortal man. They are commonly described as stronger than a marine in power armor, and their claws are described as diamond hard. I think that its reasonable that they can penetrate Terminator armor, but its never a simple matter of just punching through it first time. Its usually a Stealer ambushing a Termi from behind and punching a claw through a joint.

Diamond isn't very strong compared to things we already have like Graphene, fullerite, Carbon Nanotubes & similar things. Compared to what terminator armor must be made of it's nothing.

Well, plot armor isn't all its cracked up to be I guess

 ThePrimordial wrote:

I'm going to go ahead and say that most cars weigh more than that...

You got a lot of cars that weigh that much. Most big trucks only weigh 1750 pounds.

Would those be trucks made out of cardboard? The 5-person sedan I drive weighs about 2800 pounds and it's not considered a large car. That assumes you're talking about US pounds where I convert 1300 kilograms by a quick and dirty 2,2 multiplication.

What the hell is that sedan made out of? Depleted uranium?
Also a 5 person car? You crazy brits.
A model 2500 extended cab truck is 3/4 of a full ton, and most "car" style cars are 1000-1500 pounds.
I now realize I was using short tons. Large trucks are normally considered about 2250- 2500 pounds.

Target joints, or areas weakened by previous attacks.

 LoneLictor wrote:
Target joints, or areas weakened by previous attacks.

I'd be fine with that, but the official description is going through the armor dozens of times harder and hundreds of times stronger than diamond in a swipe. Taking off an armored arm or leg.

Don't genestealers have rending as the source of their terminator-murdering abilities? That only really takes things out through weight of many attacks. It's not that the genestealers are ignoring armor or anything, it's that they're just peeling it apart layer by layer to reach the juicy center.

Also, heat resistant materials aren't necessarily impervious to being shredded, crushed and sliced. Terminator suits are repurposed engineer and construction frames, which doesn't really make them invulnerable to anything.

It is ironic that something designed for withstanding the heart of a plasma reactor has a big weakness on the tabletop...to plasma guns.

Gosh, hate to be a pedant here, but a BMW 760li (sedan) weighs 5,013 lbs...

1,000 lbs is a 2 cylinder car like a Ford Geo or something. Even my tiny little Prius is 1,335 lbs.

It really doesn't matter, though.

Back to the topic - I think it's more a giant, ultra-strong alien armed with diamond hard teeth and talons tackling, smothering, tearing and twisting with all of its abominable might that is what kills the marine inside the terminator armor. I don't think it's slash slash you're dead... I think it's a long, brutal, horrible grappling match.

And, you know, it's fiction, too

 Xenocidal Maniac wrote:
Gosh, hate to be a pedant here, but a BMW 760li (sedan) weighs 5,013 lbs...

1,000 lbs is a 2 cylinder car like a Ford Geo or something. Even my tiny little Prius is 1,335 lbs.

It really doesn't matter, though.

Back to the topic - I think it's more a giant, ultra-strong alien armed with diamond hard teeth and talons tackling, smothering, tearing and twisting with all of its abominable might that is what kills the marine inside the terminator armor. I don't think it's slash slash you're dead... I think it's a long, brutal, horrible grappling match.

And, you know, it's fiction, too

So according to Dictionary of Numbers (greatest chrome app ever), the weight of your tiny little prius is equivalent to a dairy cow...

 Happyjew wrote:

 Xenocidal Maniac wrote:
Gosh, hate to be a pedant here, but a BMW 760li (sedan) weighs 5,013 lbs...

1,000 lbs is a 2 cylinder car like a Ford Geo or something. Even my tiny little Prius is 1,335 lbs.

It really doesn't matter, though.

Back to the topic - I think it's more a giant, ultra-strong alien armed with diamond hard teeth and talons tackling, smothering, tearing and twisting with all of its abominable might that is what kills the marine inside the terminator armor. I don't think it's slash slash you're dead... I think it's a long, brutal, horrible grappling match.

And, you know, it's fiction, too

So according to Dictionary of Numbers (greatest chrome app ever), the weight of your tiny little prius is equivalent to a dairy cow...

That sounds reasonable. I mean, you could ride a cow easily enough.

Ultimately, any sort of armour is still just armour, and eventually something will show up that is powerful enough to penetrate it. Even though Tactical Dreadnought Armour is supposedly strong enough to withstand even the impact of micro meteorites, the materials used in the manufacture of Terminator armour plating are the same ones used for standard power armour, so it's really just quite a bit thicker than the 1 inch of standard Astartes PA.

"The armour is massively bulky and contains a full exoskeleton arrangement of fibre bundles and adamantium rods to support the heavy gauge plasteel and ceramite plates which form the outer carapace."
- 2E C:AoD

"Genestealers, like virtually all Tyranid organisms, are characterised by their six limbs and resilient carapace. They are bipedal, able to move with lightning speed on their reverse-jointed, clawed lower limbs. The upper sets of limbs are distinctly different, the foremost pair ending in razor-sharp claws capable of slicing through even Tactical Dreadnought armour (ref. MGP.Macragge. 1stComp.qv). [...] Once the Genestealer is in close combat, it utilises its clawed forelimbs to rip apart its opponents. The three claws on each forelimb are incredibly sharp and diamond-hard, able to slice through bulkheads and cut through the thickest armour. Combined with the awesome strength afforded by the efficiency of the Genestealer's musculature, it is quite feasible for a Genestealer to rip its way through the side of a Chimera to get to the troops inside."
- WD #266

It is perhaps of note that diamond is also the material used in the tips of bolt weapon ammunition as a means to have it punch through power armour.

 Xenocidal Maniac wrote:
Gosh, hate to be a pedant here, but a BMW 760li (sedan) weighs 5,013 lbs...

1,000 lbs is a 2 cylinder car like a Ford Geo or something. Even my tiny little Prius is 1,335 lbs.

It really doesn't matter, though.

Back to the topic - I think it's more a giant, ultra-strong alien armed with diamond hard teeth and talons tackling, smothering, tearing and twisting with all of its abominable might that is what kills the marine inside the terminator armor. I don't think it's slash slash you're dead... I think it's a long, brutal, horrible grappling match.

And, you know, it's fiction, too

I don't know where these weights are coming from but I can bench 220 currently and I've lifted the rear of a prius very briefly. I don't think that's right.....
In Space Hulk it is "slash slash you're dead" when you have ,quite literally, a wearable tank.
Terminator armor is in lore stronger than the other 2+ save units other armies have (besides MC's)

I always imagined genestealers "digging" through the armour. They just rip stuff off until they find a squishy marine inside.

How many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie terminator?

 ThePrimordial wrote:
I don't know where these weights are coming from but I can bench 220 currently and I've lifted the rear of a prius very briefly. I don't think that's right.....

The weights come from actually looking them up. Try google. One of those american truck monsters you mentioned should weigh twice what my car does. A large modern motorcycle can clock in at 750 lbs easily.

But in order to not go further off-topic... the genestealers are so much faster and more agile than a marine in TDA that they can almost always choose where to attack from and when. Having the best armor in the world is pretty nice, having the manueverability of a sloth when attacked is not. The genestealer doesn't necessarily get through the armor with the first swing but it gets several more while the poor terminator is trying to turn around and face it.

Spetulhu wrote:

 ThePrimordial wrote:
I don't know where these weights are coming from but I can bench 220 currently and I've lifted the rear of a prius very briefly. I don't think that's right.....

The weights come from actually looking them up. Try google. One of those american truck monsters you mentioned should weigh twice what my car does. A large modern motorcycle can clock in at 750 lbs easily.

But in order to not go further off-topic... the genestealers are so much faster and more agile than a marine in TDA that they can almost always choose where to attack from and when. Having the best armor in the world is pretty nice, having the manueverability of a sloth when attacked is not. The genestealer doesn't necessarily get through the armor with the first swing but it gets several more while the poor terminator is trying to turn around and face it.

Edited by insaniak. The language filter is there for a reason
I just looked this up and my car weighs 9300 pounds. I was wrong. I apologize.
I don't know where you're getting them being that much faster but marines and genestealers are about even in physical capabilities. Genestealers just have claws and glands. That's it.
If you look up fight scenes in the new space hulk game the marine will outpace the 'stealer in combat with equal reflexes and speed but more skill. It's when there are multiples your dudes start to die.

One of TDA's chief disadvantages is the lack of mobility. I already kind of doubt a Marine out of armour would be as fast and flexible as a Genestealer, but confined to that walking tank it should be a safe bet that the xeno can indeed dance circles around him. It is for this very reason that Terminator armour works best in narrow environments such as the tunnels in some Hive hab complex or .. well, the narrow corridors of a space ship. In essence, anywhere they cannot be flanked or attacked from behind.

"Unlike Space Marines in power armour Terminators are bulky and slow moving. [...] As the Horus Heresy sucked the resources from the Imperium, Terminator suits became increasingly rare, for they were exceptionally difficult to create and maintain. In addition, during most battles their bulk became a disadvantage against the lighter power-armoured warriors who easily outmanoeuvred them. [...] Terminator armour contains a full exo-skeleton and a complex arrangement of fibre-bundle muscles that allow a warrior to fight with deadly skill in close quarters, where agility is not of paramount importance."
- WD #266

If the new Space Hulk game does not reflect this loss in manoeuvrability, then I'd say that is simply one of the inconsistencies that are bound to happen in licensed products.

 ThePrimordial wrote:

 Xenocidal Maniac wrote:
Gosh, hate to be a pedant here, but a BMW 760li (sedan) weighs 5,013 lbs...

1,000 lbs is a 2 cylinder car like a Ford Geo or something. Even my tiny little Prius is 1,335 lbs.

It really doesn't matter, though.

Back to the topic - I think it's more a giant, ultra-strong alien armed with diamond hard teeth and talons tackling, smothering, tearing and twisting with all of its abominable might that is what kills the marine inside the terminator armor. I don't think it's slash slash you're dead... I think it's a long, brutal, horrible grappling match.

And, you know, it's fiction, too

I don't know where these weights are coming from but I can bench 220 currently and I've lifted the rear of a prius very briefly. I don't think that's right.....
In Space Hulk it is "slash slash you're dead" when you have ,quite literally, a wearable tank.
Terminator armor is in lore stronger than the other 2+ save units other armies have (besides MC's)

LOLOLOLOL were you waiting all thread to tell us all how much you could bench? 220 isn't really something to brag about

Yeah buddy, try google for the car weights... it's not that hard.

Terminators can do back flips.Ask the multilaser lord who lets eldar keep their helmets.

Its for balance, does anyone realy belive a normal gun could ever penetrate a few inches of space marine super metal? Let alone 1/6 of the time.

It would take highly specialised tools hours to get through that kind of material, so it would essentialy be impervious to assault even from these super strong aliens. Its all just balance.

In the galaxy where tyranids come from, tearing through 2+ armour is a common thing

A Prius (or any hybrid) has a quite a few batteries. Batteries are extremely heavy for their size, I'm not so sure that's a great example. Why not look up these cars actual weights? (Prius Curb weight (lb.) 3042, from the Toyota website) Also how do we know terminator armor weighs 1000 pounds? Is this a guesstimate or did this get pulled from some novel?

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
Terminator armor doesn't have a power field. Its invulnerable save was an extension of the fact that they used to role their save on 2D6 and a 2+ on a D6 just wasn't as tough as the armor actually is supposed to be.

The fluff I read (in the codex) states a power field generator in the Crux Terminatus.



As to the original topic, both are true. TDA is really that hardy and Genestealers can punch through. It just goes to show how strong they really are. Just because on the TT tbhey arn't all they cracked up to be doesn't meanthey suck in fluff. In the fluff they are the most feared CC troops in the galaxy or close to it. Literally having Death Companys gakking the bed.

Toughness, strength and hardness are different things. Carbon nanotubes are strong, but only in tensile resistance. Diamond is hard. Diamond cutting across CNTs will shred them.

It's because the shoulder pads on Terminators are not big enough to stop a genestealer from cutting through it with their fingernails.

My take: the armour-shielding is achieved partly through an electric field - much like the current electrically charged armour that the Brits are experimenting with. It's designed for high impact projectiles, made of metal.

But a chitin claw, from a creature that's just sneaked up out of your line of sight, scraping through relatively slowly, looking for gaps between plates, is very different...

Chitin wouldn't do a sausage of damage...

 ThePrimordial wrote:
What the hell is that sedan made out of? Depleted uranium?
Also a 5 person car? You crazy brits.
A model 2500 extended cab truck is 3/4 of a full ton, and most "car" style cars are 1000-1500 pounds.
I now realize I was using short tons. Large trucks are normally considered about 2250- 2500 pounds.

No you've just gotten mixed up. All those numbers are correct, but they are kilos, not pounds.